World Trade Organization Meeting 1999

[in Seattle, Washington of the United States of America]

• Animal-rights
  • This has known terrorist factions, but I don't know their exact names.
  • Their objective is to convince the WTO to enforce Western standards on Third-World countries, and to remove WTO illegalization of their objectives. I have no opinion about either of these objectives.
  • PETA [People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals] is generally law-abiding. One of my aunts is a member of this.
  • My general view is that if it is pragmatic to satisfy the goals of PETA, great -- but this is often not the case.
    • Human agriculture (plant and animal) has been responsible for the preservation of many species.
    • Eurasian badgers need human agriculture to thrive. Their normal preferred food is earthworms (although they are omnivorous) -- and earthworms are themselves drastically helped by human agriculture [a synergy: if one tries to do "intelligent agriculture" (this subsumes organic agriculture), earthworms in the soil will drastically improve the soil condition, and then maintain it after it has been improved]. My source for this is "The Social Badger", by Hans Kruuk, published in 1989 by Oxford University Press.
    • From a natural-selection point of view, we should shift testing for weird chemical risks, etc. from humans to animals whenever feasible. In this respect, PETA's stance is contrasurvival and unDarwinian for humans.
• Environmentalist
  • This has known terrorist factions. Greenpeace comes to mind immediately. [Yes, they are on the United Way list: they use terrorist methods. I have refused to donate to the United Way because of Greenpeace's membership, on ethical/moral grounds. The U.S. Congress, at the next revision of the terrorist organization list, should add Greenpeace to it if Greenpeace continues using terrorist methods. I don't think the U.S. Congress will do that....]
  • Their objective is to convince the WTO to enforce Western standards on Third-World countries, and to remove WTO illegalization of their objectives. I am in favor of the first, and have no opinion on the second.
    • Actually, they should go further and insist on the imposition of extreme Western standards on Western nations, in some cases. Example:
      • The Wichita Eagle has reported (I may be able to locate the story -- or may not) that Denmark has a legal tolerance for cadmium in sewage of 1 part per million -- while the United States has a legal tolerance for cadmium in sewage of 30 parts per million. It would be reasonable for the WTO to impose Denmark's standard on the United States -- since sewage is an organic fertilizer used in commercial agriculture in the United States....
• Labor rights
  • This does not have known terrorist factions.
  • Their objective is to convince the WTO to enforce Western standards on Third-World countries, and to remove WTO illegalization of their objectives. I am generally in favor of the first, and have a strong emotional bias against the second.
    • I have watched, first-hand, a labor union deliberately Ch.7-bankrupt a corporation.
      • The labor union insisted that physical reality (in this case, cash-flow and accounting considerations) was a lie -- and voted accordingly, refusing a 20% pay cut for themselves and a 30% pay cut for management by roughly 9:1 against.
      • This coerced the corporation into declaring Ch.7 bankruptcy, which resulted in a 100% pay cut for the union members.
      • This has resulted in my having a weak irrational emotional bias against unions, which I intellectually compensate for. My ex-fiancée has a strong emotional bias in favor of unions. [This issue did not result in the (probably permanent, wishfully temporary) cancellation of our engagement.]
      • I am willing to mention the name of the now-defunct corporation to anyone who emails me. Just ask. My directly naming it on my virtual domain is inappropriate.
• Cuban Americans
  • This does not have known terrorist factions.
  • Their presence is simple: Fidel Castro of Cuba is attending!! He may make his case for the WTO to annul the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba. His case is relatively strong this year. [The Cuban-Americans, of course, are a major political force behind this trade embargo.]
    • November 1999: it was unveiled on MyCNN that the U.S. government has given a higher priority to the U.S. trade embargo of Cuba than the war on illegal drugs.
      • Fidel Castro has ordered his government to take all actions possible to stop illegal drugs bound for the U.S. from passing through Cuba.
      • While Fidel is said to have the resources to catch only 0.1% of the traffic passing through Cuba (even with assistance from France and the United Kingdom), that 0.1% will die for it.

• However, the Seattle police are not removing them physically. Maybe the intent is to rack up more charges against the protesters before arresting them??

• The International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union has announced that 9,600 of its workers will participate in a 1-day shutdown of all U.S. West Coast ports to protest the WTO's agenda of free trade -- rather than fair trade. This is in conjunction with planned labor-led mass action.
• David Aaron, U.S. Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade, has stated that Japan intends to cause total failure of the 1999 WTO meeting by leading a faction that is trying to use the WTO to deconstruct anti-dumping regulations.
  • Japan has every reason to deconstruct these regulations: its exports are being annihilated by them. Japan's track record is to use government subsidies to cancel the automatic losses caused by selling below production cost.

• It looks like Japan isn't going to get a chance to implement its plans. The labor and environmentalist protest factions have initiated violent protests.
  • U.S. President Clinton has proven generally sympathetic, and has announced his intentions to negotiate for fair trade rules, uniform environmental laws, and uniform labor laws.
  • U.S. President Clinton has also indicated that the latter two will be tempered by the need to raise Third World countries to First World economic standards.
    • However, U.S. President Clinton has pointed out that if the labor and environmental law issues are not dealt with, the Third World countries will self-sabotage their development efforts.

• Fidel Castro has cancelled his attendance plans (this should neutralize the Cuban-Americans). The initial press release stated this was "to avoid humiliation". Later, a letter dated Nov. 29, 1999 [indicating the decision was made prior to the violent protests] and distributed Dec. 1, 1999 indicated the cancellation was based on a credible leak from the U.S. State Department. Details are presumably clearer in the letter than in the news report.
  • Rubin correctly did not claim immediate knowledge of what lower-level officials had done (in contrast to Japan's standard responses).
  • Considering how irrational the United States' policy is respect to Cuba, Fidel Castro's explanation is probably honest as far as it goes. [The United States' Cuba policy has directly contradicted John F. Kennedy's pre-assassination intentions since 1963, according to one story in the K.C. Star somewhen in 1999. Also, see commentary under the Cuban-American faction.]
    • The wording I'm using is already strong enough to emotionally fry those fanatically favoring the United States' Cuba policy. I don't need to state my opinion more accurately.
• U.S. President Clinton has arrived in Seattle. Those who consider themselves emotionally delicate: I am obligated, by academic standards, to report much that is heinously immoral and appalling.
  • Downtown Seattle is in a state of civil emergency.
  • U.S. President Clinton intends to talk "behind the scenes" with the demonstrators today.
  • A new faction has appeared: this one wants to abolish the WTO.
  • Tear gas, pepper gas, and rubber bullets were required to disperse demonstrators. Some demonstrators had the presence of mind to throw the gas canisters back at the police (with undocumented results). I wouldn't rule out some of these being thrown at WTO delegates (cf. below).
    • Some restaurants were looted.
    • Several transit buses were attacked: the drivers were physically assaulted, tires were slashed, and batteries were removed in an effort to disable the vehicles.
    • Police arrested about 60 people. Another 30 were injured in the melee. A number of WTO delegates checked into hospitals after being exposed to tear gas or pepper gas.
    • The environmentalist and abolish-WTO factions were documented as:
      • trying to prevent delegates from leaving hotels.
      • successfully blocking access to conference facilities.
      • spray-painting walls and police cars with anti-WTO graffiti.
    • Iowa Governor Tom Vilsack was physically endangered by demonstrators. His body-guards managed to get him out unharmed -- but the same cannot be said for the state trooper on top of Gov. Vilsack....
    • Demonstrators were documented as:
      • Breaking windows at a McDonald's, an FAO Schwartz toy store, a Joan and David shoe store, and an unnamed bank.
      • A toy-store window full of Barbie dolls was spray-painted with "Barbie Kills".
      • Four placards were carried by nonviolent demonstrators:
        • Labor: "WTO Hell No", "Green Backs Unite"
        • Christian: "America Repent", "Trust Jesus"
  • Demonstrators defied a dusk-to-dawn curfew, and continued to conduct property damage through the night. Curfew violators that were intercepted by police were jailed.
    • Among other stores, the following were vandalized: NikeTown, a Planet Hollywood restaurant, a Nordstrom, a McDonald's restaurant, and a Starbucks coffee house.
  • James Hoffa (President of the Teamsters) has stated the official objective of the Teamsters: "We're going to change WTO, or we're going to get rid of WTO.". Apparently, the abolish-WTO faction is a subfaction of the labor faction. This explains some of the violence: the Teamsters have a long track record of misdefining "protest" to include "felony". [Back in the Teamsters-UPS strike August 1998(?), at least 12 Teamsters were arrested for assault and battery -- on strike-breaking drivers. Most of these drivers needed hospitalization.]
  • President Clinton has pointed out that the preservation of family farms in the United States requires the ability to increase U.S. agricultural exports -- because the United States produces more food than it needs.
    • This could change within two decades. Example issue:
      • The Equus aquifer (a major part of Wichita, KS's water supply) has a ground structure above it that makes it impossible, with cutting-edge technology, to build a large-scale hog farm that meets EPA standards. Wichita is coordinating a multi-county effort to illegalize hog farms over the Equus aquifer. If this effort fails (it is being fought by a large corporation that already has a construction schedule for a hog farm over the Equus aquifer), the resulting hog farm will render the Equus aquifer deadly to drink (from nitrates) and deadly for irrigation within 30 years of operation. Keep in mind that Midwest agriculture requires aquifer water -- and apparently cannot substitute other water sources.

• Mayor Paul Schell was forced to declare a 24-hour curfew around the WTO meeting complex until midnight Friday (when it ended). The 7:30 PM-7:30 AM curfew for all of downtown Seattle was also enforced through then.
• In one clash in a residential area, there is general consensus among the residents that the police started the clash by moving in without provocation. Police insist that the residents openly joined the demonstrators.
  • John Goodman, of the United Steelworkers of America (a nonviolent protesting organization) said police fired tear gas without provocation.
  • The Seattle police apparently violated an informal agreement to arrest peaceful protesters peacefully.
• The ACLU [American Civil Liberties Union] is considering suing Seattle for violating the Washington and U.S. Constitutions by the declared curfews.
• 160 military troops were deployed to assist with potential terrorism [hostage-taking, biological and chemical warfare].
  • 4 Special Forces operatives were sent to assist FBI "crisis support" agents.
  • 55 military Explosive Ordinance Disposal teams were sent (and 25 trained dogs and their handlers).
  • Military commands named included: U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. Forces Command, the U.S. Army Biological-Chemical Command, the U.S. Air Force Security Forces Command and the U.S. Joint Forces Command.
  • The Department of Health and Human Services, in conjunction with the Federal Emergency Management Agency, have set up a staging area to deal with biological attacks at the U.S. Naval Reserve Center-Lake Union in Seattle.

• Clinton apparently has decided that for the past few months, U.S. negotiators setting up the U.S. stance for this were not representing the United States. Clinton has rectified this by suggesting that sanctions "eventually" be used against nations that violate core labor standards.
  • This is a direct insult to most developing nations, who classify this as protectionism. This caused a general failure of this round of WTO talks. Japan and Australia generally support the developing nations on this issue.
    • George Fisher has pointed out to me that the developing nations don't understand that if they want internally driven economic growth, they need labor standards to permit mass consumption. I.e., labor standards are required for sustainable economic growth.
    • On the other hand, the last time the issue came up on MyCNN [May 1999?], the only nation that had internally driven economic growth was the United States. Even the EU was export-dependent for economic growth.
  • The U.S. negotiators were totally surprised (as they should be, since they were not representing the United States). Months of setting up an unintentionally inaccurate platform was undone in minutes.
• It appears that most, if not all, African nations believe they have been shut out of the discussions and will refuse to sign anything on general principles.
• Before Clinton corrected his negotiators on their own negotiating stance, it appeared that a non-WTO group to consider biotechnology more carefully was in progress. There also appeared to be some progress towards preventing tariffs in Internet commerce.

• A few points could be sifted out in the blame-game aftermath:
  • The U.S. and EU were in consensus that no attending party at the Seattle WTO meeting was politically willing to make significant concessions, coming in.
  • 83% of the U.S. public wanted labor and environmental standards to be part of future WTO-mediated trade accords.
  • I would like a citation before November 28 that William Roth [chairman of the Senate Finance Committee; ] had predicted that the WTO talks could collapse if Clinton pressed for labor reforms. Apparently, "eventually" counted as sufficient pressing for collapse! I'm certain this shaped the U.S. negotiator position for the last few months. However, it proved contrary to the low-level views of the United States -- and Clinton had to act to fix the negotiating position immediately, regardless of consequences.

• Canada's trade minister Pierre Pettigrew stated that he did not expect real progress on WTO issues until after the next U.S. election. [Apparently, because it superficially appears that Clinton's shift was dictated by election considerations]. However, the next round (on agriculture and services) should go ahead as planned in Jan. 2000. Canada may be considering lowering or abolishing tariffs on goods produced by the world's poorest countries.
  • Canada seems to be ignoring the 83% approval rate of adding labor and environmental standards to trade treaties in the United States. This is a dangerous oversight: while it is possible (on other one-issue considerations, such as whether to restrict abortion-on-whim as authorized by Roe vs. Wade, 1974) to elect a new government that ignores this approval, the new government will be faced with major instability when this point comes up again.
    • The labor-environmental standards issue is provoking late 1960's style activism -- which is a cultural artifact of the U.S. being fundamentally founded in rebellion. This is fairly serious: the U.S. lost the Vietnam war to this.
    • The AFL-CIO is very effective at getting members to stick to official opinions by simple declaration -- and will authorize strikes and other disruptions as required to deal with a wayward U.S. government!
  • Canada (and many other nations) may well find out that the U.S. position on labor and environmental standards in trade treaties "extremizes" after the U.S. elections.
  • The Third World reaction to the labor-environmental standards issue was mindless. A humanly intelligent response would have been to convince the EU to apply the new U.S. position against the U.S.: a serious attempt to include EU environmental standards into an EU-U.S. trade treaty is the fastest way to find out how solid the U.S. support for that is. It is clear, from the initial Clinton shift, that the environmental half is weaker anyway -- and since they are linked, taking down environmental standards may also take down labor standards by emotional reasoning.
    • By collapsing the talks early in reaction to the U.S. position shift, the Third World nations sabotaged their own position. To protect their own position, they needed to take all reasonable steps to disrupt the 1960's-style activism and labor unions immediately. The Jan. 2000 talks may already be destabilized.
• The African nations were shut out of the later negotiations. After Clinton forced the U.S. negotiators to represent the U.S. on labor and environmental standards, the instant polarization locked the U.S., EU, and Japan into a futile triangle. It seems that the U.S. negotiators' failure to represent the U.S. on this was required to get a restrained response from Japan and the EU. There were three core issues that shut down the WTO talks in Seattle:
  • U.S.: labor and environmental standards in trade treaties.
  • EU: maintenance of agricultural subsidies
  • Japan: deconstruction of laws penalizing selling goods below cost of production.
  • Once the U.S. negotiators were forced to represent the U.S. by Clinton, EU and Japan negotiators proceeded to fully represent the EU and Japan, respectively.

• What is clear is that of the ~525 misdemeanor cases filed in Seattle regarding excessively disruptive protesting, ~280 have been dismissed at once.
  • The city attorney Mark Sidran described the reason as inability to prove beyond a reasonable doubt.
  • In contrast, Robert Boruchowitz (of the public defender's office) said many of these cases were dismissed because the arrest was without probable cause (and thus violated both the U.S. and Washington Constitutions!). For these cases, I see no way for a spectator to determine who lacks veracity (both lawyers are obviously honest!).
  • Of the remainder, ~40 are still in the courts, and the others have been guilty pleas, diversions, or dismissals.
  • The 13 felony cases (involving property destruction, etc.) filed through today are apparently more solid, and will not be so easily dealt with.

• Brazil considers the U.S. to be largely responsible for the collapse of the Seattle WTO talks, and furthermore considers the U.S. uninterested in relaunching talks. Apparently, the EU is more flexible.
  • One large sticking point is the U.S. linking child labor rights to trade talks. [Apparently, restricting child labor is highly offensive to many politicians in Brazil.]
    • Well, what does Brazil expect from a nation that calls foreign required business practices felonies under its laws? Might such a nation do other strange things like demand child labor rights in exchange for trade liberalization?
    • The U.S. is, among nations, almost hyper-ethical. President Clinton's involvement in 'Naughtygate' is a prime example of this: it was amazing to many in Franci, Russia, and Hong Kong that such a minor incident could risk impeachment (and after that, removal from office) for President Clinton.
      • In Hong Kong, there was an explicit article explaining that the U.S. was much better off with an effective President Clinton with such a minor problem, than Mr. Tung -- who is remarkably ineffective and absent from major crises, such as the disastrous opening of Hong Kong's new international airport.
      • Russia had an article explaining how America's perplexing concern over such minor moral details was evidence that the situation was much more favorable there than in Russia under Yeltsin. [I don't recall who carried it.]
  • South Africa's proposal to create a trading block including India, Brazil, itself, and Nigeria is very interesting to Brazil.

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